Kranky Cafe in Mount Pleasant

Our never-ending quest to find independent and unique coffee bars in Vancouver continued with a trip to Mount Pleasant. Near Main Street and 4th Avenue there's an interesting mix of retail, semi-industrial and residential; a neighbourhood in transition I suppose, like much of this city.






Slightly east of Main on 4th, across from a tyre shop, is Kranky Cafe. Unassuming, unpretentious and quite wonderful.















There are breakfast and lunch items including freshly made sandwiches, wraps and soups. The pies look fantastic and everything is made in house.







Indoor or outdoor seating, both are pleasant enough.

The coffee was fine. The espresso was strong without a bitterness. A proper espresso cup might have been better, but in this case that is a quibble. The latte was certainly acceptable too.

Decent service, interesting clientele and a nice atmosphere that invokes a New York City sensibility; part of a neighbourhood, yet with an urban attitude.









Sherry has visited Kranky Cafe several times, whatever that tells you, and Jeem will be back one day too. On hot summer days they serve affogato, which should be incentive enough.

Photos by Jeem. Copyright 2015 by Jim Murray.

Margaret Wente on the election

Margaret Wente, the conservative and American-born columnist for the Globe and Mail, has penned a powerful endorsement for the change taking place in Canadian politics.Under the heading, With Liberals squeezed out, a new two-way race, Wente provides insight and reason. Reason enough to vote for the New Democrats.

Back in the olden days, there were only two federal parties that mattered in Canada. Both were middle-of-the-road. Both had a string of mostly credible leaders. Every so often they traded places, but in truth it was hard to tell them apart. Then there was the idealistic wacko fringe, whose leaders were forgettable (sorry, Audrey and Alexa!) and whose popular vote rarely broke through 20 per cent.

Now it's a new kind of two-way race. Now it's easy to tell the dominant parties apart. One party stands for lower taxes. The other party stands for helping people who have a hard time making ends meet. Both have credible, experienced leaders. The party in the middle has been squashed.

As the commentator Norman Spector puts it, the choice is between the orange door and the blue door. The NDP has replaced the Liberals as the party that can stop Prime Minister Stephen Harper. If you hate what’s behind the blue door, your best bet is probably the orange door.

The Conservative attack campaign against Justin Trudeau has been devastating. That’s because it confirms what everybody knows: Being PM is not an entry-level job, and Mr. Trudeau does not yet pass the competency test. It is the smartest ad campaign since the campaign that shredded Michael Ignatieff as the man who didn’t come back for you. And you will see it, over and over, until the Liberals have been knocked so far down that the Conservatives can turn their guns on Tom Mulcair.

Stephen Harper's dream is to obliterate the Liberals for all time. He may well succeed. His greatest ally in this cause is Mr. Mulcair, who is everything that Mr. Trudeau is not. The Liberal leader is caught between two formidable adversaries, looking like a boy and shouting to be heard. His policies, too, are caught in the middle. In an election that will turn largely on the economy, he can't find a message that differentiates his party and resonates with voters.

Mr. Harper\s attack against Tom Mulcair will be equally simple. The aim will be to sow fear and terror. Mr. Mulcair is too risky. He'll turn us into Greece, and then we’ll be sorry.

Mr. Mulcair's strategy will be to keep putting on a smiley-face while reminding people why they hate Mr. Harper so much. He will try to imitate his mentor, Happy Jack, who took the NDP out of the wilderness toward the Promised Land. Mr. Layton didn't live to reach the Promised Land of 24 Sussex, but Mr. Mulcair could.

Mr. Mulcair will be very careful not to sound like a scary radical. He will talk about being a uniter, not a divider, and about how much he believes in manufacturing and small business, and even pipelines, under the right conditions. His job is to present himself as a strong, competent, trustworthy and low-risk alternative to the status quo.

His biography is a formidable asset. Mr. Trudeau was a trust-fund kid who inherited his dad's Mercedes and never had to do hard manual labour to make a living. Mr. Mulcair comes from a barely middle-class family of 10 kids who, as his campaign autobiography puts it, could make four sandwiches from a chicken wing. He worked construction to put himself through law school. He speaks perfect French and knows how to tar a roof. Mr. Trudeau's background is not his fault, but his professions of empathy with the struggling middle class lack a certain credibility.

Despite the media's infatuation with Mr. Mulcair, he has a long way to go. He's still barely on the map in the Tory bastion of 905-land that rings Toronto. All sitting governments have a large incumbency advantage, and Mr. Harper's government is no exception. The Conservatives have a superb, sophisticated war machine that has turned hypersegmentation of the electorate into an advanced science. They know who you are, where you live, and whether they should bother with you or not.

Don't believe anybody who pretends to know how this will turn out. The one thing I’m pretty sure of is that the old paradigm is dead. And it's not coming back.

Margaret Wente's column appeared in the August 3, 2015, edition of The Globe and Mail. 

Sculptors' Society's 8th Annual Exhibition at VanDusen Garden

It was a beautiful BC Day holiday weekend and the final day of the 8th Annual Sculptors' Society of British Columbia Exhibition at VanDusen Garden. Unlike some of the other shows held at VanDusen, the car shows come to mind, this display works in wonderful ways. It's a great setting for works from BC artists, and great for viewers too.




Keister 2 by Robert Rangno is one of the first things to be seen on entering the area reserved for the exhibition.
























Ron Simmer provided colourful expression with Hot Metal Flower Bouquet.












Dandelion caught my eye. It's a smaller piece by Anyuta Gusakova.












On the right, The Never-ending Song, in cold cast bronze, by Linda Schmidt.

Louise Solecki Weir's two pieces appealed to me: Boy With a Hat and Young Aristotle.





















A two-sided piece, almost my height, in ceramic and mixed-media called African Queen was one of several by the artist Suzy Birstein.





















And through the mix of artworks and people it was a pleasure to meet an old friend from almost thirty years ago. Jean-Guy Dallaire is a photographer, sculptor, philosopher and more. He developed what became known as Wreck Beach Originals in the 1980s and 90s. These were works based on stones, pebbles and concretions Jean-Guy found on the beaches of Vancouver. At this exhibition he was offereing demonstrations, en français et anglais, with the theme: "It's amazing what one can see... in a stone... l'imaginaire est mon meilleur ami!"







I've always felt Jean-Guy's works to be elegantly simple yet profound and natural. It was great to spend a brief time with Jean-Guy and to be energised by his boundless passion for life and art.

Photos by Jeem. Copyright 2015 by Jim Murray.

Blue Moon over Mount Baker ~ July 31st

Another hot day around Vancouver and by the time we arrived at Centennial Beach in Tsawwassen the air temperature was 28 degrees. The water was exceptionally warm too, cooling as the tide came in. As the sun set the sky became a paler shade of pink.




A blue moon happens about every 30 months and occurs whenever there are two full moons in a single month.

From our vantage point this full moon rose behind Mount Baker. It was never blue, nor is it hardly ever blue, making one wonder why it's called a blue moon. The song perhaps?

Photos by Jeem. Copyright 2015 by Jim Murray.

Vancouver Granville Nominating Meeting for Mira Oreck

Wednesday, July 29th and yet another hot night in Vancouver. We are in the middle of a hot crowd of NDP members and supporters who have arrived at VanDusen Gardens to acclaim our candidate for the brand new constituency of Vancouver Granville. There members of the old guard present and encouragingly a bunch of newbies too.






















David Eby, the hard-working MLA for Vancouver Point Grey, and the candidate who soundly defeated Christy Clark in that riding in 2013, was the evening's presenter. Obviously the microphone placement was not initially set for David, a rather tall individual to say the least.

Bob Baker opened the evening with traditional song and drumming.  Mr Baker is from the Squamish Nation and his opening included a warmth and gentle humour that blessed all present. He was followed by the candidate's great aunt. Zoe Oreck is 90 years young and has a history of activism in the city of Vancouver.

The effervescent Joy MacPhail made the keynote address. She is a former MLA and Leader of the BCNDP. She looked out at the crowd of over 300 and expressed surprise at seeing her dentist of many years near the front row. According to Joy, after years of hearing him complain about the NDP while performing dental work, it was both shock and reward to see how this campaign launch had brought him out in support of the NDP.











There were other NDP notables in attendance including Adrian Dix, Constance Barnes, and fomer MLA and MP, Dawn Black who entertained all present by asking for our money to help fund the campaign. Starting at $1500, she garnered several donations at that level before moving down the line. As she called out a dollar figure people would put up their hands and persons holding clipboards would arrive to record the details. The last I heard, the total raised this night was about $30,000, which goes a long way to meeting the $100,000 or so allowed to be raised in individual ridings. That amount will vary depending on when the Prime Minister calls the election.





The candidate for Vancouver Granville is Mira Oreck. She grew up in the riding, not far from VanDusen Gardens.  She is west coast director for the Broadbent Institute, and has worked on several campaigns, including the 2012 re-election campaign of US President Barack Obama (where she co-produced a video that went viral) and Gregor Robertson's bids to get elected both as an NDP MLA and as mayor of Vancouver. She is intelligent, articulate and passionate, and obviously, drawing a crowd like tonight's, a valuable candidate for the NDP.








There was a tinge of nervousness as Mira gave her first speech of the campaign, as should be the case. The candidate is not full of herself, nor overly confidant; this is something important and meaningful, and winning this riding will take a great deal of work. Mira Oreck is up for the hard work and the challenge. This is not the NDP of your parents and it shows. Just ask Joy MacPhail's dentist.

Vancouver Granville is a brand new riding drawn from four former constituencies: parts of Liberal-held Vancouver Centre and Vancouver Quadra, Conservative-held Vancouver South and NDP-held Vancouver Kingsway. Going by the votes in the last election the eastern flank of this riding is NDP, the southern part consistently voted Liberal until the last election when it tilted Conservative, and the wealthier neigbourhoods of Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy in the middle, which tend towards the Conservative Party. Nobody said this would be easy, but right now, it's a three-way race.

Photos by Jeem. Copyright 2015 by Jim Murray.